The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

The coup in Yemen by Iranian proxies and the death
of Saudi King Abdullah must be seen through the eyes of Iranian regime
elements focused on the "end-of-times" prophecies. These huge
developments are seen not only as strategic opportunities by the Iranian
regime; they are seen as fulfillments of prophecy signaling the
imminent appearance of the Mahdi to bring final victory over the enemies of Islam.THE END-OF-TIMES WORLDVIEW

The Iranian regime’s view of the world is centered aroundthe appearance of the Mahdi, also known as the Hidden 12th Imam
in Shia Islam. It also explains its strategy in the context of
prophecies surrounding the Mahdi’s arrival on the scene, including
issues related to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

Former President Ahmadinejad famously
displayed his belief that the Mahdi’s return is very near to the point
that other regime elements derided him and his clique as “deviant” for believing that the Mahdi is directly guiding them.

Ahmadinejad was not doing this for
domestic political reasons. If anything, it hurt him politically. He’s
continued the rhetoric even after leaving the office. In April, he said
the Iranian regime will “provide the setting for the Hidden Imam’s
world revolution” and it’s the “prime goal” to facilitate the
“beginnings of the emergence of the Hidden Imam.”

Supreme Leader Khamenei’s beliefs are not different. He likewise preaches
that the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran is the fulfillment of prophecy
to set the stage for the Mahdi to defeat Iran’s enemies.

Like Ahamdinejad, Khamenei believes
Iran has a responsibility to consciously fulfill prophecy in order to
trigger this event. His representative in the Revolutionary Guards said in June that Iran needs to shape the necessary “regional preparedness” for it to happen.

In July 2010, a senior Iranian cleric said
that Khamenei told his inner circle that he had met with the Mahdi, who
promised to “reappear” during his lifetime. A sermon by a top cleric in
Qom and shown on state television claimed that Khamenei said “May Ali protect you” the second he was born.

The most vivid explanation of the end-of-times prophecy in the Iranian regime’s calculations came in 2011 when a terrifying video
was leaked titled, “The Coming is Upon Us.” It was obtained by Reza
Kahlili, a former CIA spy within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The
Iranian regime did not contest its authenticity.

The basis of the video was that the
Iranian regime is fulfilling specific prophecies to trigger the
appearance of the Hidden 12th Imam.
Supreme Leader Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chief
Hassan Nasrallah are depicted as the incarnations of figures foretold in
prophecy.

Kahlili said the production of the
film was overseen by President Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff and it ends
with a list of endorsements from clerics. A portion was shown on the regime-controlled media.

The blowback was fierce even from within the regime. A major seminary in Qom even condemned the comparison of Ahmadinejad to the military commander who will lead the final war. Significantly, it did not condemn the comparison of Khamenei to the political leader who will ally with the Mahdi known as “Seyed Khorasani.”

The regime tried to distance itself from the video, but the filmmakers said
it was shown to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad for approval. They also
pointed out that prominent clerics and Revolutionary Guards commanders
call him “Seyed Khorasani” to his face. Khamenei’s representative in the
Guards told a state newspaper on April 12, 2011 that ayatollahs agreed that Khamenei is Khorasani.

The Iranian regime’s foreign policy is
based on a fusion of these strategic and ideological goals. It
rationally pursues these extremist objectives. The mistake that many
Western analysts make is conflating the two. The regime appears
Soviet-like in its strategic calculations, but they are made for a
highly ideological end.DEATH OF SAUDI KING & COUP IN YEMEN

The full significance of the death of Saudi King Abdullah can only be understood through the Iranian prophetic framework.

The aforementioned video produced by
former President Ahmadinejad’s office is very clear that King Abdullah’s
death is considered the clearest sign of the Mahdi’s imminent
reappearance, so much so that it called for his assassination.

“Whoever guarantees the death of King
Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, I will guarantee the imminent reappearance of
the Mahdi,” it forcefully declares.

The film predicts that the death of
King Abdullah will be followed by immense internal strife in Saudi
Arabia. This leads us to what just happened in Yemen.

Iranian writer Rohollah Fahihi authored an article
earlier this month about how the expected death of King Abdullah is
being linked to a prophecy about the appearance of the Mahdi coming
shortly after the death of a king named Abdullah in the Hejaz region of
today’s Saudi Arabia.

The film cites the Iranian-backed
Houthi rebels in Yemen as leading a prophetic revolution. Their
capturing of Yemen’s capital and achieving what is essentially a coup
against the U.S.-allied government will be seen one of the strongest
signals that the Mahdi is about to appear.

The film also mentions a prophecy
about a Yemeni figure named Yamani who will lead a march to Mecca in
Saudi Arabia. It suggested that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is
destined to play this role by pointing to his Yemeni heritage.

The rise of the Houthis will likely
revise this interpretation. A leader directly from Yemen is more likely
to be seen as the Yamani figure that will launch an offensive into Saudi
Arabia.OTHER FULFILLED PROPHECIESWar in Iraq

The end-of-times video states that the
U.S. fulfilled a prophecy about an enemy invasion of Iraq from the
south that kills its leader. The regime sees the current conflict in
Iraq as part of the environment for the Mahdi’s appearance.

Last year, a new Shiite militia with strong Iranian backing formed in Iraq
to fight the Islamic State terrorist group and it also operates in
Syria. It is tellingly named Saraya al-Khorasani or the “Khorasani
Brigades.” As discussed, Seyyed Khorasani is the prophesied political
ally of the Mahdi.

The choice of name may be inspired by a legendary Shiite military leader who defeated the Umayyad Caliphate. However, the Khorasani Brigades’ emblem is identical to Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guards, strongly suggesting that Khamenei is seen to be Seyyed Khorasani.

Fahihi's aforementioned article quotes
a Shiite cleric in Qom, Iran as explaining that the Islamic State and
Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria are seen as fulfilling a prophecy by Imam Ali
about a deceitful Muslim group raising black flags. These enemies will
be named after cities, making a further correlation to the Islamic State
through its self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.Civil war in Syria

A reporter for Al-Monitor wrote
in September 2013 that Hezbollah is treating the rebellion against the
Syrian regime as part of prophecy based on a Shiite holy book titled
Al-Jafr. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy confirmed this report in August.

Hezbollah believes that it foretells
the killing of Syria’s leader (presumably Bashar Assad) and that a Sunni
leader will come to power that oppresses the Shiites
until Iranian forces arrive to liberate them. Hezbollah likely views
the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda) as these enemies.Perceived U.S. weakness towards Iran

The end-of-times video shows clips of
U.S. officials talking about Iranian military might. Intimidation of
America is offered as evidence that the Mahdi is about to come.

In May 2012, an Iranian newspaper controlled by Khamenei featured an article
that seeped with enthusiasm for U.S. policy. It had prophetic overtones
by mentioning the fall of the Saudi royal family as if its demise is a
foregone conclusion.

“With diminishing support for Israel
and with the (upcoming) collapse of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, there
won’t be any obstacles left facing Iran with its policy of annihilation
of Israel,” the author writes.

The writer was particularly enthused
with U.S.-Israeli tensions over the interim nuclear agreement and
negotiations with Iran. He also pointed to the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt.

“It can be said that within the last
60 years, this is the first time that the Zionist regime [Israel], since
its illegal inception, has had to endure rejection by the West over its
vision and interest in the region,” he said.IRAN'S NEXT MOVES: PROPHECIES TO BE FULFILLEDDestabilization of Saudi Arabia.

The prophecy states that there will be
internal strife in Saudi Arabia so that is what must happen according
to the Iranian regime. Some of this may be due to in-fighting within the
royal family or a clash between reformers and the Wahhabist clerics,
but there are also options for Iran to help trigger it.

First, the Houthi rebels of Yemen can
move north into southern Saudi Arabia. Secondly, Iran can try to stir up
the alienated Shiite-majority population in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern
Province. This is a tempting target because of the favorable
demographics and the fact that the area is home to 90% of the country’s
oil.Destabilization of Bahrain

The pro-U.S. Sunni government of
Bahrain oversees a population that is 70% Shiite. A popular revolution
nearly toppled the monarchy in 2011 until the Saudis and the United Arab
Emirates sent troops to assist the government's violent crackdown.

“[Bahrain is] the best opportunity to begin setting the stage for the emergence of the 12th imam, our Mahdi,” said a representative of Khamenei to the universities at the time.

Iran nearly instigated a military clash with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia before backing down. The government stabilized but Iran continued to sponsor terrorist plots.

In February 2013, Bahrain foiled
a plot by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi Hezbollah to
attack the Interior Ministry and international airport. There was also a
bomb plot, perhaps likewise hatched by Iran, to destroy the King Fahd Causeway that links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. State Department confirms
that an Iranian shipment of arms to Shiite opposition personnel in
Bahrain was foiled in December 2013, specifically the February 14 Youth
Coalition. The situation has since quieted down, but the Iranian regime
will ramp up its activity in Bahrain if Saudi Arabia becomes distracted
in handling its own destabilization.Strengthening ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and operations to destabilize Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

The Iranian end-of-times video states
that a prophetic figure named Shoeib-Ibn Saleh will spearhead an
Iranian-Arab bloc against Israel, the U.S. and their Arab allies under
the political leadership of Seyed Khorasani (Khamenei).

Ahmadinejad’s office predictably said
he is the incarnation of this character. He is now out of office but the
prophecy still stands.

The film cites the Arab Spring as an
ongoing fulfillment of prophecy and identifies the Muslim Brotherhood
(and therefore Hamas) as the Sunnis destined to ally with Iran. The issue standing in the way is the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is refusing
to even negotiate with Iran, but that may change due to international
pressure and dependency upon Turkey and Qatar. Iran has restored ties to
Hamas and Hamas is offering Hezbollah a joint jihad against Israel. Khamenei is emphasizing his belief in a Shiite-Sunni alliance.

The Sunni Islamists’ massive setbacks
in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will have to be reversed for this prophecy
to be fulfilled. Egypt says Hamas is involved in terrorist activity against its government. Sudan, an ally of Iran and Hamas, is accused of supporting Islamist forces in Libya and may do the same in Egypt.Victory in Syria

Hezbollah and Iran believe the
prophecy requires them to save the Shiites in Syria from radical Sunni
oppressors. This may not necessarily mean re-capturing all of Syria.

It is possible that they will settle
for a scenario where the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda are defeated, the
Allawites (a Shiite offshoot) are protected and a ceasefire is reached
with the rebel-held areas, especially if those rebels are willing to go
along with a Shiite-Sunni jihad against Israel.

The bottom line is that Iran and Hezbollah believe that the Mahdi will only re-appear after Syria is brought to some kind of resolution that leaves the Allawites in power.CONCLUSION

According to this end-of-days belief,
all of these events lead up to the Iranian-led capturing of Jerusalem,
after which the Mahdi will appear and bring about the final victory. These violent beliefs and goals cannot be ignored.

The Iranian regime will feel a sense
of immense empowerment by the coup in Yemen and the death of King
Abdullah, especially if the prophesied instability happens in Saudi
Arabia. Khamenei and those in the regime who think like him will see
this as Allah’s green light for a dramatic escalation.Ryan MauroSource: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/death-saudi-king-coup-yemen-signs-iranian-prophecy Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Iran’s theologian rulers are aiming for Mecca and
Medina, the holy cities of Islam, which will give them control over the
entire Muslim world. But they will have to fight the 80% majority Sunnis
to get the holy cities.

Iran is
on the verge of nuclear weapons and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
(ICBMs). Obama is pretending it ain't, so he can sign his totally
phony “peace agreement” with the mullahs. But Israel’s Netanyahu won’t
sign on to a treaty that will give the genocidal cult of Iran all the
power in the world.

We don’t want war; but war has been declared on us.

That is the dilemma of the political elites, and their string of puppets in the media.

Obama
is the dance-away politician. He has always danced away from the
consequences of his actions. But this time he can’t. The French, by
facing the truth of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, are actually more honest and courageous in facing reality. America is lagging.

The
reality that everybody secretly knows is that the Iranians have been
chanting “Death to Israel! Death to America!” every single day since
1979, when Jimmy Carter allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to take over Iran, to
throw out our ally the Shah, and to grow into a warmaking aggressor
against all its theological enemies, including the Saudis. Now Obama has
allowed Iran to take over the Iraqi regime in Baghdad along with Yemen,
and Syria, creating a strategic pincer that points to Israel, Egypt,
and Saudi Arabia. Iran’s theologian rulers are aiming for Mecca and
Medina, the holy cities of Islam, which will give them control over the
entire Muslim world. But they will have to fight the 80% majority Sunnis
to get the holy cities.

This
is what the Saudis are facing, and this is why the succession struggle
for the head of state in Saudi Arabia has implications for the entire
Arab and Muslim world, and therefore the rest of the world also. Iran is
on the verge of nuclear weapons and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
(ICBMs). Obama is pretending it ain't, so he can sign his totally
phony “peace agreement” with the mullahs. But Israel’s Netanyahu won’t
sign on to a treaty that will give the genocidal cult of Iran all the
power in the world. That is why Obama hates Netanyahu, and wants to
destroy him. Obama is therefore making exactly the same move made by the
appeasers of Hitler and Stalin in Europe. He is gambling on a losing
game of appeasement, but nobody, certainly not the Arabs, believes a
word. They know who the totalitarian aggressor is, and they know he has
to be defeated decisively. Meanwhile Obama, who is the most mentally
rigid politician outside of Moscow, is publicly raging and ranting --
not at the mullahs, who are the plain and obvious aggressor, but at the
scapegoat.

Jesus
was a scapegoat for the fearful collaborators with the Romans in Israel
at the beginning of the Common Era. The Jews were scapegoats for every
tyrant since that time, except where Christians were the scapegoats for
Romans, Vikings, Muslim invaders, and all the aggressive forces from
that time to the Nazis and Communists. Scapegoats are needed when a
politician needs to deny responsibility and blame the nearest victim who
cannot escape. Scapegoating is the mark of mob politics.

In
1200 CE the first wave of Muslim invaders conquered India, and
immediately started to wipe out all the Buddhist monasteries, which were
vulnerable because the monks were pacifists who often did not defend
themselves. Buddhism, a pacifist creed, was soon destroyed in its land
of origin, and it has never come back in full flower. It is now
practiced in China, Japan, and South East India. But not in most of
India, where Vedanta philosophy flowered instead. Multiple Muslim
invasions killed off Buddhism, because Vedanta, as a family and
community creed, was able to withstand the multiple massacres imposed by
wave after wave of Muslim jihadists. The last Indian-Muslim war was the
Partition of India in 1948, which killed three million people, and led
to the split between Muslim Pakistan and majority-Hindu India. Since
then Pakistan keeps up a terrorist war against India, but it has not
been able to mount a full-scale Muslim invasion of India. India has a
thousand years of resistance against wave after wave of jihad invasion,
and every citizen of India knows in his or her bones that peace is good,
but survival is better, if you must choose. Hinduism is not as
aggressive as jihadist Islam. Neither is Buddhism. But over the
centuries they have learned to defend themselves.

But
not the West. Our superficial and self-deluded political elites pretend
that jihadi Islam is peaceful, just like early Buddhists did before all
the monasteries were destroyed. Muslim forces have bought up our
political and media class, which is why they keep lying to us about a
clear and present danger.

So
Obama is blaming the victim, along with his Eurosocialist buddies in
Europe. If only Israel would surrender to the phony “Palestinians”
everything will be okay. For Hitler it was Czechoslovakia that had to be
his to prevent war, and once he swallowed the Sudetenland he would
never, ever, be nasty again. Then it was Poland. Then it was all of
Europe, and ultimately it would have been America, because the Nazis had
a world-conquering ideology. So did Stalin.

At
some point the lies became clear to every sentient person in the West,
and reluctantly, very slowly and reluctantly, Western politicians and
media types began to see how trapped they were. It was surrender or
fight. No other choice.

Today, after the Charlie Hebdo massacre
showed the French and other Europeans that this was a stand-or-die
moment, the French people poured into the streets to show how well they
got it. Forty political leaders jumped on the bandwagon, because their
jobs were on the line. But Obama remained aloof, thinking that he could
still dance away from the choice. Obama has long proclaimed delusional
lies as the truth, and maybe he really believes he can still get away
with it. But Canada, Australia, and Britain don’t think so. The French
don’t think so. Most normal Europeans don’t think so. And Obama will be
out of power soon.

This
is the Phony War, the time of indecision and of desperate efforts to
fake a solution to a dwindling chance of true peace. The only people who
are bound and determined to have their way are the Jihadists, the
Iranian mullahs on the Shi’ite side, and the ISIS fanatics on the Sunni
side. Everybody else is trying to dodge the problem, hoping against
hope. Obama may not believe he can walk on the water and create a peace
agreement between all the players: Not just Israel and the Pals (a
totally phony scapegoating conflict), but between Iran and Sunni tribes
in Iraq and Syria, who support ISIS, between the Saudis who are caught
between the devil and the deep blue sea, backed by Egypt and Pakistan.
The jihadist aggressors are gambling that audacity and mass murder will
win. Overall, Obama has been backing them whenever possible, including
Al Qaeda in Libya, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and (through Turkey) even
ISIS. Obama keeps thinking he can clever his way out of this trap, but
he’s dealing with Persian and Arab rug sellers who have seen this game
for a thousand years. They can tell a coward when they see him.

In
the upshot, Obama does not want the china shop to fall apart before he
leaves office. Like Bill Clinton, he cares less about the fate of the
country and the world than he does about himself. Clinton dodged four
chances to get Bin Laden, and when he left office the Twin Towers were
bombed, right at the start of the Bush Administration. So George W. was
stuck with the problem, and Clinton danced away from of blame (at
least as far as his own media buds were concerned). That is Obama’s
goal, too. He wants to be able to blame the next president for the
messes he made, and which he allowed to go out of control, during his
eight years. Obama is therefore trying to pin the blame on Netanyahu,
who wants to save his country from nuclear genocide. This is a
disgusting, cynical, mean-spirited game.

In
the last few days Obama left his own trip to India, skipping the Taj
Mahal, to fly to Riyadh and lobby the new leadership -- the new king is
believed to suffer from dementia, and he had to talk to younger
politicians, including probably Bandar El Sultan, who is jockeying for
power along with the rest. The Saudis’ top pols were complicit in the Al
Qaeda attack on this country in 9/11/01, and excused themselves to the
Americans by saying their shaky failed state would not survive if the
real fanatics, the Wahhabi theocrats, took over. We had a choice between
supporting the Saudi villains to keep even worse characters from taking
over. Both Bush and Obama went along, because OPEC controlled the
international price of oil and could destroy our economy. It was a
bargain with the devil.

When
90-year-old King Abdullah died Obama went on an emergency trip to
Saudi, to figure out how he could keep Saudi Arabia’s Rube Goldberg
contraption going long enough to finish his term in office. More than
anything else Obama wants that Jimmy Carter photo op with the Israelis
on one side, the Pals on the other, and the New York Times
piously proclaiming Peace in our Time. The Obama goes home and allows
the whole fake tower of cards to crumble, no matter who gets hurt. He
has saved his reputation, at least among his True Believers (who will
believe anything he says). Now he can blame whoever comes next. The
Democrats and their fake media will scream and yell long enough until
everybody believes the next president is a warmongering Republican.
That’s how Clinton got away with it, and that’s how Obama wants to do
it.

I
don’t think the Saudis believed a word of it. Nobody in the know
believes Obama any more. The Saudis are furious at him for allowing
their worst enemies, the infidel Shi’ites of Iran, to build nukes and
missiles. They live right in Iran’s bull’s eye. They are getting ready
for the worst by bringing in Egyptian and Pakistani troops to man their
borders (they don’t have a big enough population or military
themselves), and to keep the option of buying off-the-shelf nukes from
Pakistan. They just built a 600-mile military barrier to keep ISIS out.
They are outraged at Obama for empowering their most deadly enemies, and
some, like Prince Bandar, have already built mansions in the West.
(Bandar’s exile mansion overlooks Aspen, CO).

Obama
wanted America to withdraw from the world, and our political elites
went along. Conservatives have understood very well that China, Russia,
Iran, and other aggressors would instantly fill the vacuums created by
American retreat. That is exactly what happened. Everywhere in the
world, our closest allies are in big, big trouble, and they are rearming
as quickly as they can.

In
the Muslim world the thousand-year-old split between Sunnis and
Shi’ites is devolving into war. In Iraq, the Baghdad regime is
controlled by Iran, the new Persian caliphate. In Turkey, Sunni radicals
led by Recip Erdogan are trying to re-create the Ottoman Empire --
including the old uniforms with the pointy helmets. In Lebanon Iran’s
proxy terror group Hizb’allah is in control, and sending troops to
support Syria’s Assad, who is a sort of Shi’ite. Egypt has managed to
throw out Obama’s favorite Muslim Brotherhood puppet, and El Sisi sounds
like the sanest voice in the Muslim Middle East. But he, too, is
fighting a revolt by radical Islamofascists.

What
a mess. Six years ago there was still a precarious balance in the
Middle East, based in good part on Egypt, the “pillar of peace.” Today,
Egypt’s Mubarak has been purged, but another military man, El Sisi has
taken over. So the pillar survives, so far.

As
for the rest, almost every single Muslim regime in the ME is gone or in
trouble. Iran’s proxy just overthrew our guy in Yemen. Libya is at war,
entirely due to Obama’s brainstorm of overthrowing Gadaffi and using
his armaments to support the rebels in Syria.

This
is how community agitators work. They don’t “organize” communities.
They agitate to disorganize them, so they can pick up the pieces when
things fall apart. Most of the world understands Obama by now, and they
are afraid. But Americans can’t believe that our own president would be
so utterly destructive. Ordinary Democrats think the chaos in the Middle
East is just bad luck. But it’s not. It’s all part of Obama’s Grand
Design, a narcissistic overreach so bizarre and improbable that it was
bound to fail.

This is how Marxists always end up: grand ambitions ending in an enormous mess.

(Venezuela
today is finally understanding that, and even the Washington Post has
belatedly told them to give up on a centralized command economy).

The
next president will have a lot of apologizing to do -- for Obama, not
for the United States. But more important, the next administration will
try to save what can be saved from the six decades of Pax Americana,
when our allies could trust our word. Obama has killed off the most
important single ingredient in any defensive alliance, real trust that
the alliance would hold under pressure.

Nobody
trusts us anymore, and there is no reason they should. We were the
lynchpin of world security for six decades, but once trust it lost, it
may never be restored.

Isn’t
it great to have our first black president? Now the Democrats will try
to repeat that trick, and foist on us a president merely because she is
female. Or merely because s/he is LGBT. Or merely because… et. bs
cetera.

With
Obama our voters got suckered but good. The same thing happened with
Bill Clinton and the Arkansas twins. Jimmy Carter, in retrospect, sold
out to Muslim influence peddlers way back in 1979, when the Ayatollah
took over our U.S. embassy and all its diplomats, and Jimmy did next to
nothing. That was the first proof to the Muslim world that the United
States was the weak horse, and they have been trading on that ever
since. Even today, Carter and his foreign policy gurus still claim they
were right to let the radical Islamists take over in Iran. That is why
the mullahs show such utter contempt for this administration. Obama is a
round-heeled pushover, like Jimmy Carter, and they are beating us
hollow.

Today
immense amounts of money from Muslim sources are going to Democrats,
and probably some Republicans as well. On the R side, we have to demand a
clear accounting of who is paying for what. The Democrats are a lost
cause.

James LewisSource: www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/obama_squirms_to_dodge_the_truth.html Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Can the International Criminal
Court [ICC] even be considered an impartial legal body, any more than a
Jim Crow court in America's old South?The supporters of this repackaged anti-Semitism always seem perfectly
comfortable "forgetting" that Hamas offers its people no human rights.
Thus is a liberal democracy, Israel, maligned by a theocratic tyranny.It is clear that these illustrious members of the international
community are secretly hoping that if they can rig the system so that
the Arabs can finish off Israel, they, in the international community,
will still be able to preen and congratulate themselves that the
obliteration of the Jewish state had nothing to do with them.Groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Hizbullah or Hamas are considered terrorists because
they do not abide by the principles of international or domestic law.
That, as well as the acts they commit, is what identifies them as
terrorists. The differentiating factor with Islamist terror
organizations is that they do not recognize international law at all.Islamic law frees Hamas and other such groups from any obligation to
abide by international standards, which they demonize as "Western" or
"Christian" and therefore "Satanic."As stated by an official UN report of 2009, among others, systematic
and deliberate targeting of civilians violates International
Humanitarian Law and amounts to a war crime.Any movement, such as Hamas, that is openly determined to bring about
the abolition of a sovereign state and the genocide of its citizens,
breaks every clause in every charter of international law.

On November 4, 2014, Amnesty International published a scathing report
on Israeli "war crimes" in Gaza during the war between Hamas and Israel
last year. Entitled, "Families under the rubble: Israeli attacks on
inhabited homes," the report accuses Israel of displaying "callous
indifference" in launching attacks on family homes in the densely
populated coastal strip, and argued that in some cases the conduct
amounted to war crimes. The report makes difficult reading. The toll of
human tragedy in the conflict was enormous. Over 2,100 Palestinians were
killed, about 1000 of them civilians. But did Israel commit war crimes?
And is Amnesty reading war crimes legislation in a balanced way?

The following day, the recently retired UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, published an article in the New York Times,
in which she calls for Europe to allow "Palestine" to be admitted to
the International Criminal Court [ICC], a body to which neither Israel
nor the United States is party.

One day later, November 6, 2014, the chief military commander of the
U.S., General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a
man with lifelong military experience, including senior service in Iraq,
flatly contradicted
both Amnesty and Pillay in an outspoken insistence that Israeli troops
had behaved in an exemplary fashion. "I actually do think that Israel
went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian
casualties," he said. "They [the IDF] did some extraordinary things to
try and limit civilian casualties to include ... making it known that
they were going to destroy a particular structure".

Dempsey's remarks are a direct echo of sentiments expressed (and not
for the first time) by a former British commander in Afghanistan, Col.
Richard Kemp: "The way that this conflict [Operation Protective Edge] is
being portrayed in many, many media outfits by many reporters, by some
politicians round the world, is the mirror opposite of reality. Israel
has been demonized, Israel has been accused of committing war crimes.
The real war crimes have been committed by Hamas."[1]

It is, surely, quite clear that the debate about the ethics, policies
and actions of the IDF could not be more polarized -- not least between
amateurs who have never been in combat, and professional soldiers who
have fought against Islamist foes for many years. Either the IDF is made
up of war criminals or, as Kemp has said,
"the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of
civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of
warfare."

Already during the conflict between the Jewish state and Hamas, on
July 23, 2014, Pillay was accusing Israel of possible war crimes: "There
seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been
violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes," Ms. Pillay said.
Already well known for her anti-Israel views, her comment was hardly
surprising; nor was hers the only voice to issue this claim. Speaking
earlier in the year, Human Rights Watch had already said much the same
in a public statement.

A few months later, at the end of December, Mahmoud Abbas, acting as
president of a joint government between the Palestinian Authority in
Judea and Samaria and Hamas in Gaza, signed the Rome Statute in order to
join the International Criminal Court. On January 6, 2015, UN Secretary
General Ban Ki Moon announced that the Palestinians could do so on
April 1. He based eligibility on a majority vote of the General
Assembly, on October 30, 2014, to recognize "Palestine" as a state. This
decision came in spite of a vote against recognition of a full-fledged Palestinian state by the UN Security Council, on 30 December 2014.

There is an ongoing debate about all of this: whether "Palestine,"
which has few of the characteristics of a sovereign state, can
legitimately join the ICC and launch war crimes accusations against
Israel; whether the ICC will consider itself legally empowered to take
on such a case, whether the Palestinians may not risk being investigated
for war crimes themselves, and not least whether the ICC can even be
considered an impartial legal body, any more than a Jim Crow court in
America's old South.

It is clear that, should the Israeli Supreme Court prosecute
individual Israeli citizens for crimes during the last Gaza war, the ICC
would automatically need to recuse itself from a broader prosecution,
as attorney Alan Dershowitz has written.

The fundamental issue is whether any of the accusations against
Israel are true. Has Israel been committing terrible crimes in Gaza? Or
were the war crimes in this conflict actually committed by Hamas, while
Israel and its armed forces behaved in an exemplary fashion, in
hard-fought battles, to minimize civilian casualties? Further, are the
claims of war crimes and indiscriminate killing born, not from
humanitarian anxieties, but from a recrudescent anti-Semitism? It often
seems as if your grandmother's old-fashioned anti-Semitism has merely
morphed and been repackaged as anti-Israel invective and rallies that
call on Hamas to rise up for human rights. The supporters of this
repackaged anti-Semitism, however, always seem perfectly comfortable
"forgetting" that the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas]
offers its people no human rights, and often liberal helpings of human
wrongs. Thus is a liberal democracy maligned by a theocratic tyranny.

It is time that Israel's harsher critics, politicians, and the media
acquainted themselves with the physical and legal facts of this
conflict. Their goals may be admirable, even if their motives are not;
for which of us does not wish to minimize the deaths of innocents? But,
sadly, they seem have taken precisely the wrong side of the moral
argument.

Rather than help save innocent lives, they seem actually to relish
putting Israel into the dock. They promote incessant rounds of boycotts,
divestments and sanctions, mounted against Israel and no other nation.
At the UN, they continually vote lopsided for sanctions against Israel
and no other nation -- not Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Pakistan
or the Sudan. They will, if they are successful, merely bring about
another round of fighting, which will be followed by another round and
so on, with thousands of civilians and soldiers dying in the process.

It is clear that these illustrious members of the International
community are secretly hoping that if they can rig the system so the
Arabs finish off Israel, they, the illustrious members of the
international community, will still be able to preen and congratulate
themselves that the obliteration of the Jewish state had nothing to do
with them.

Israel is not mankind's enemy; it is not even an enemy of the
Palestinian people. Hamas, on the other hand -- a brutal,
internationally-recognized terrorist organization -- is the greatest
threat to, first and foremost, Palestinians.

Western attempts to weaken Israel only serve to strengthen its enemies. Hamas is explicit in its 1988 Charter
that its long-term goal is to commit genocide, not only of all Jews in
Israel, but of all Jews everywhere. It could not be plainer. Cries that
Israel deliberately commits war crimes just support this genocidal
intent. That alone will encourage even wider genocides in Syria and
Iraq, or massacres of Christian infidels in Europe -- something that has
already started to happen in earnest. Is this what the anti-Israel
marchers, the sloganeers and the NGOs really want?

Most people know and agree that Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, the
Islamic State [IS, Da'ish, ISIS], Hizbullah, or Hamas are considered
terrorists because they do not abide by the terms of
international or domestic law. That, as well as the acts they commit, is
what identifies them as terrorists rather than "freedom fighters" or
"militants." Like the German Red Cells or the Italian Red Brigades and
other European terrorist bodies in the 1970s, a terrorist's job is to
terrorize: they use terror to achieve their ends, and this comparison
helps us place Hamas within that category. But there is a
differentiating factor with the Islamist terror organizations, and that
is that they do not recognize international law at all.

All the norms of the Geneva Conventions, UN resolutions,
international treaties, the protection of refugees, all other things
that govern military action and aspects of internationally accepted
norms of law, they reject because they only recognize one legal system,
namely Islamic shari'a law. And the aspect of shari'a law in all the
five law schools (four Sunni and one Shi'i) that applies to
international relations, the fighting of war, and the making of truces
and treaties, is the law of jihad. It has a special section in all books
of general shari'a law.

A dependence on Islamic law frees Hamas and other such groups from
any obligation to abide by international standards, which they demonize
as "Western" or "Christian" and therefore "Satanic." When the Islamic
State gives Christians or Yazidis a choice between conversion, payment
of protection money (jizya), or death, they abide by the strict
terms of jihad law as it has been practiced for fourteen centuries. When
they kill without offering a subordinate status in return for the
annual jizya payment, they breach Islamic law in the case of
Christians, but not in the case of Yazidis (or Hindus or other
"pagans"). Therefore, calling on Hamas to abide by recognized
conventions is pointless.

To illustrate this, let us just examine three passages from Article 13 of the Hamas Charter[2]:

"(1) Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and
international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the
Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse
directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance
Movement is part of its religion.... (2) Now and then the call goes out
for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of
solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea,
for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to
convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties
constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards
Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these
conferences capable of realizing the demands, restoring the rights or
doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of
setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbiters. When did
the infidels do justice to the believers?.... (3) There is no
solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives,
proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and
vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with." (Italics added)

Hamas's statement of purpose reads: "Jihad is its path and death for
the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." (Article 8).

It is inevitable that any movement, such as Hamas, that rejects
peacemaking outright, and is outspokenly determined to bring about the
abolition of a sovereign state and the genocide of its citizens, breaks
every clause in every charter of international law. Thus, from the
Introduction of the Hamas Charter: "Israel will exist and will continue
to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others
before it;" and from Article 7: "The Day of Judgement will not come
about until Moslems fight the Jews and kill them (hatta yuqatil al-muslimun al-yahud fa-yaqtuluhum al-muslimun[3]),
when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees
will say O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill
him".

It is this assumption of superiority to international legal norms,
and complete indifference to their demands, that makes Hamas, like all
other jihadi movements, such formidable enemies. Glorification of
suicide also increases their alienation, not only from legal standards
in warfare, but from the ethical standards of civilization. It is not
only their own thirst to die that marks these extremists out, it is that
they wish for the deaths of their own people, whether as suicide
bombers or as casualties of a conflict started by Hamas itself.

The spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said on July 13, 2014, in an interview
on Al Aqsa TV (Hamas's TV network), "We aren't leading our people today
to destruction. We are leading them to death." Several basic elements
should be taken into account:

Israel has never initiated any of the conflicts in which it
has been engaged. Not the 1948 war, when seven Arab armies from five
countries invaded it. Not the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel found itself
surrounded by armies from Egypt, Syria and Jordan about to invade. Not
in 1973, when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria with
Jordan again invaded Israeli territory and were fought off at great
cost. Not the first Gaza war, the second Gaza war, or the 2014 conflict.
All Israel's actions have been defensive, all Arab actions offensive.
This has a serious bearing on the issue of which side has acted legally
within the confines of international law. This is not a matter of
opinion, but of history: of plain, verifiable fact.

Since 2002, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have bombarded southern
Israeli towns and villages with rockets and mortar fire. Over the years,
those rockets have become larger and more accurate, with supplies of
advanced rockets from Syria and Iran. Over 15,000 missiles have struck
Israel during that period. During 2014, strikes were made across most of
Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. All of these attacks have
been offensive and indiscriminate.

Israel has taken the defense of its citizens seriously, providing
them with bomb shelters, ordering all houses to be equipped with secure
rooms, creating an extensive alarm system to warn of incoming rockets,
and building the very effective Iron Dome missile defense system. This
has meant that Israeli casualties have been few, while defensive
measures have never hurt a single Palestinian. Israel's defensive
measures have also protected its own Arab population, which has a direct
bearing on the spurious claims of "disproportion" in fighting.

Hamas provided absolutely no defenses for its civilian
population. There are no bomb shelters, no secure rooms, no alarm
systems, and no anti-missile installations in the Gaza Strip. On the
contrary, Hamas has spent billions of dollars of aid money to supply
itself with a vast array of rockets, only used in offensive attacks, as
well as on underground tunnels designed to import weapons, to protect
the Hamas military forces, and to serve as conduits for attacks on
Israel civilians during Gaza-Israel cross-border kidnapping and murder
attacks. (The tunnels are now being used to allow Hamas to launch
attacks into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and it is thought that Hizbullah
is digging similar tunnels into Israeli territory in the north.)

Hamas has, as mentioned, fired thousands of rockets onto Israeli
civilian centers, including several thousand before and after the latest
conflict. Its firing has been indiscriminate and has impacted on
civilian areas only. This is a war crime, as indicated in paragraphs 4-5b of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.

As stated by several sources, including the official UN report
published in August 2009, deliberate and systematic targeting of
civilians and civilian objects in southern Israel since 2001 by
Palestinian armed groups' rocket attacks violates International
Humanitarian Law and amounts to a war crime. The Israeli Intelligence
and Terrorism Information Center [ITIC] notes that such attacks
contravene the Principle of Distinction, as encapsulated by Article 48 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Former Canadian justice minister and McGill University law professor
Irwin Cotler and ITIC both point out that a violation of this
prohibition also amounts to a war crime as defined in the Article 8(2)(b)(i), p. 9 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

With respect to Palestinian terrorist acts and the discovery of armed
Hamas operatives entering Israeli civilian areas through tunnels, it is
also worth noting that this is also a war crime according to Article 8(2)(g) of the same Statute.

Human Rights Watch and the pro-Palestinian Israeli rights group
B'Tselem have both issued reports stating that, even had the above
attacks been directed at a specific military objective, they would still
be unlawful, since the types of rockets used by Palestinian armed
groups are imprecise and cannot be directed in a way that discriminates
between military targets and civilians. A Human Rights Watch report, "Rockets from Gaza,"
on the 2008-2009 Gaza war (but no less true last year), stated that,
"Palestinian armed groups unnecessarily placed Palestinian civilians at
risk from retaliatory attacks by firing rockets from densely populated
areas. Additionally, reports by news media and a nongovernmental
organization indicate that in some cases, Palestinian armed groups
intentionally hid behind civilians to unlawfully use them as shields to
deter Israeli counter-attacks."

The use of human shields

There is overwhelming evidence that Hamas used human shields in
various ways. Children have been used to protect fighters, who
physically hold them. Numbers of civilians have been ordered into
buildings containing military emplacements, against which Israeli
attacks are likely or planned. More broadly, there is evidence that
Hamas military structures, rocket launch pads, and command centers have
been situated directly in or next to civilian dwellings, hospitals,
mosques, and schools. This is historically a deliberate Hamas policy, as
is clear from a 2008 video of a speech by Fathi Hammad, the Hamas Interior Minister:

"The enemies of God do not know that the Palestinian
people have developed their methods of death and death-seeking. For the
Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel,
as do all the people living in this land. The elderly excel at this, and
so do the mujahidin [i.e. the jihad fighters] and the children. This is why they have formed human shields [duruq bashariyya] of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahidin,
in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they
were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death, just as you desire
life.'"

How does Hamas's use of human shields potentially play out in legal
terms? According to the conclusions reached during and after the 2008-09
Gaza War, in which Hamas used tactics similar or identical to those it
has used in 2014, the BBC reported
on January 5, 2009 that "Witnesses and analysts confirm that Hamas
fires rockets from within populated civilian areas." Amnesty
International, which now condemns Israeli "war crimes," earlier assessed
that Hamas fighters put civilians in danger by firing from homes. UN
Humanitarian Affairs Chief John Holmes accused Hamas of war crimes, saying
"The reckless and cynical use of civilian installations by Hamas, and
the indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilian populations, are
clear violations of international humanitarian law."

A study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies [CSIS] suggests that Hamas must share
responsibility for the effects on Gaza's civilian population, as it
seems to have relied on the population density of Gaza both to deter
Israeli attacks and as a defense against Israeli offensives. Irwin
Cotler has said that attacks from within civilian areas and civilian
structures -- such as apartment buildings, mosques or hospitals -- in
order to be immune from a response, are unlawful. He argues
that in these cases, Hamas bears legal responsibility for the harm to
civilians, as enshrined in general principles of International
Humanitarian Law.

ITIC accused Hamas of making systematic use of protected civilian
areas (including homes and mosques) for hiding and storing rockets,
explosives and ammunition; the use of civilian facilities (such as
universities) for developing weapons, and calling on Palestinians to
flock to targets expected to be attacked in order to form human shields.
Such conduct contravenes the Laws of Armed Conflict, and some of the
practices above amount to a war crime under, for example, Art. 8(2)(b)(xxiii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.'

It is obligatory, under international law, to distinguish between
military and civilians. This is a major theme in international law
protocols. Article 51 of the protocol additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions makes this clear.

That human shields are used by Hamas is self-evident from detailed
maps, which show how totally embedded Hamas military forces were within
the public and private buildings across the Strip, but mainly in Gaza
City, where entire neighborhoods are as much military bases as
residential sectors. This is also illustrated in a report released by
the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] Military-Strategic Information Section
on August 9, 2014, under the title "Hamas War Tactics: Attacks from Civilian Centers."

"Additionally, Hamas purposefully engages IDF troops in
conflict in urban areas. For example, in Shuja'iyya and in Jebaliyya,
IDF troops have come under intense attack by terrorists in highly
populated areas, and have been forced to defend themselves."Hamas also uses civilian infrastructures for other military
purposes, and places weapon caches and C2 [command and control] centers
in civilian places. Hamas's tactic serves two purposes. Firstly, because
the IDF responds to attacks with acute concern for innocent lives,
attacking from these sites gives Hamas a major strategic advantage.
Secondly, any civilian casualties that are incurred from these attacks
are used to create international pressure against Israel, even though it
is ultimately Hamas that is to blame for these deaths."Such tactics flagrantly violate international law and the most basic of moral precepts."

The report provides links to videos showing Hamas firing from
civilian areas, placing civilians in the line of fire, and admitting
that they do this. It shows detailed aerial reconnaissance maps, which
provide overwhelming evidence of the extent of launching sites in Gaza
north, central, and south. Further maps and videos show launches from
educational facilities, from UN and Red Cross facilities, from mosques,
from power plants, hospitals and hotels, with the maps delineating
rocket trajectories towards Israeli towns and villages.

A detailed map of Gaza City's Shuja'iyya district shows the area peppered with terrorist locations of every size. In the accompanying text, we read:

"The UN recently published a map that marks areas of
Shuja'iya damaged during IDF strikes. A comparison of the two maps
clearly demonstrates that the areas targeted by the IDF are the same
areas that the UN marked as damaged. The conclusion: the IDF
distinguishes between structures used for terror purposes and structures
used only for civilian purposes."

A few things emerge from the above statements. First, Hamas has done
its level best to avoid distinguishing its fighters from the civilian
population. Not only do they hide among that population, they do not
wear distinctive uniforms; and as often as not, they play dual roles as
fighters and civilians. This makes it difficult if not impossible for
the IDF to make that essential distinction. Second, it is legitimate to
attack embedded military sites. And third, such attacks on
undistinguished sites are subject to the condition that injuries and
damage to civilians and their property should be proportionate to the
damage that could be inflicted by the targeted site.

Many say the casualties from last year's fighting in Gaza were
disproportionate because some 2,100 Gazans died in the conflict, as
opposed to 66 Israeli soldiers and a mere 5 civilians. But this apparent
disproportion is simplistic as well as incorrect. Gatestone author
Shoshana Bryen has written in some detail about the principle of proportionality
in international law. She argues that "Proportionality in international
law is not about equality of death or civilian suffering, or even about
firepower returned being equal in sophistication or lethality to
firepower received. Proportionality weighs the military necessity of an
action against the suffering that the action might cause to enemy
civilians in the vicinity."

The claim that Israel's response to Hamas attacks was
disproportionate also ignores that 50% or more of the Gazan casualties
have been among men of fighting age -- a statistic detailed in several
places. Both the BBC and the New York Times, neither remotely
friendly to the Israeli narrative, have pointed out the enormous
discrepancies in the figures provided. "If the Israeli attacks have been
'indiscriminate,' as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to
work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women," the
BBC's Anthony Reuben wrote in "Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures."

The New York Times reached much the same conclusion. Jodi Rudoren describes the issue in "Civilian or not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead From the Gaza Conflict,"
where the names of 1,431 casualties were reviewed. The report showed
that "the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is
also the most over-represented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza's
1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were
provided." Women and children form 71% of the population yet a mere 33%
of casualties. That is also a discrepancy.

Anthony Reuben of the BBC
quoted IDF Spokesman Capt Eytan Buchman, who said that "the UN numbers
being reported are, by and by large, based on the Gaza health ministry, a
Hamas-run organisation." Buchman added that we should keep in mind that
"when militants are brought to hospitals, they are brought in civilian
clothing, obscuring terrorist affiliations," and that "Hamas also has
given local residents directives to obscure militant identities."

As no independent investigations were carried out in Gaza during the
last war, and as Fatah, Hamas and other groups have a long-standing
history of falsifying figures and filming fake scenes of carnage, it is
highly likely that the true civilian casualty figures will prove to be
much lower than claimed.

The sense of a discrepancy in the number of casualties dwindles to
almost nothing when we consider the contrast, already noted, between
Israeli defensive measures to save lives, compared to Hamas's use of
civilians as human shields. It should also be noted that claims that
Gazan civilians were killed and injured because they had nowhere to run
to are simply laughable: there are vast open areas in the Strip in which
Hamas fighters might have placed military infrastructure or to which
they might have directed civilians in the event of war (since it was
Hamas that started the war in the first place). Gatestone author Alan
Dershowitz has demonstrated in detail that Gaza's population density is not a source of vulnerability for its civilian population.

It is also is highly irresponsible to speak of Israeli attacks as
"indiscriminate." No army in history has fought with as great a concern
to avoid civilian casualties, as has the IDF. It is Israeli policy to
warn civilians of impending attacks by dropping thousands of leaflets,
making telephone calls, sending text messages, and even dropping
projectiles called "knocks on the roof" to give residents advanced
warnings to evacuate the premises. This alone makes Amnesty
International's accusation of "callous indifference" to civilian deaths
utterly indefensible. Giving advance warning of attacks is
disadvantageous for the Israeli Air Force in two ways: it warns Hamas
fighters and rocket-launching teams that they have been spotted and
designated as targets, and it allows Hamas to order civilians to remain
in buildings or go onto flat roofs to dissuade Israelis from firing.
This policy of warning civilians of a coming attack is stated clearly in
Israel's Manual on the Rules of Warfare (2006).[4]

When Hamas fighters fire from near or inside a school, mosque or
hospital, and civilians are killed in the return fire, Hamas benefits by
parading dead civilians, dead children (and dead fighters dressed as
civilians) before the eyes of the world media.

Those who condemn Israeli actions in war should first read this useful article
which argues that every IDF officer receives detailed and ongoing
training in international law relating to combat; that the IDF has a
website devoted to international law issues; that there is a legal
expert in every IDF division; that Israeli assaults are either called
off or adapted to avoid illegal action; that every single shell shot by
Israeli artillery or the air force was thought about in advance, and
that targets were vetted in advance, after being visually identified by
one or more of the technical layers of "eyes" the IDF had over Gaza --
satellites, drones, and radar.

Israel, more than any other nation, doubtless understands the need to
stay on the right side of the law and knows that the eyes of the world
are on it, while Hamas sneers at the Geneva conventions and seems to
disregard international law in every way. That disparity leads one to
ask why the world condemns Israel yet gives Hamas billions of dollars to
build more missiles and tunnels.

To speak of "indiscriminate" attacks by Israel mocks understanding
that Israel's military equipment is second to none with regard to its
technological sophistication. Given Israel's international reputation as
one of the most technically advanced countries
in the world, this hardly surprising. We can expect an Israeli aircraft
to hit its target with precision. As every civilian casualty is
detrimental to Israel's standing in the world, it makes no sense at all
for such a technically savvy country to fire indiscriminately on
civilians -- a move that would only help Hamas to win the war through
media coverage alone.

If that is so, some may ask, why did Israeli attacks kill so many
civilians? The answer is simple: first, as discussed, many civilian
deaths may not even have been civilian deaths, as in previous conflicts.
Second, the primary cause of many of those deaths may have been Hamas's
use of human shields, and the proximity of firing sites, command
centers and munitions stockpiles to every sort of civilian location.
Casualties did not come from an irresponsible and self-defeating lack of
discrimination or incompetence on Israel's part.

Going forward

It seems that half the world supports demands for Israel to lift its
entirely legal weapons and dual-use materials blockade of Gaza, so that
Hamas can get down to seriously importing long-range missiles from Iran
and its other allies, as well as large quantities of cement to build
more terror tunnels. In a recent interview
between a Reuters reporter and a Hamas leader, the Hamas official
stated openly that "the group would press on with restocking its arsenal
or [sic] rockets and other weaponry and shoring up its underground
network. In peace we make preparations, and in war we use what we have
readied."

Calls for an end to the blockade (which does not block the import of
genuine humanitarian goods at all) amounts to a policy of arming
terrorists. Hamas has already diverted billions of dollars of aid money
to build concrete-lined tunnels and purchase missiles and other arms,
leaving ordinary Gazans without the basic necessities of life, while the
Hamas elite drives expensive cars, shops at a mall selling designer
goods, and builds luxury apartments.

After the premature end Operation Protective Edge, the international
community promised to pour in more billions to rebuild Gaza. If there is
no blockade, those billions will build another arsenal, and with that
arsenal, Hamas will start another war in which even more Gazans and
Israelis will die or fall injured.

The simple solution to this is peace -- which Israel has always asked
for. But Hamas, as stated in its Charter, rejects peace out of hand and
for all time. What is needed is a government in power in Gaza that
cares about the well-being of all its citizens, and that might see
permanent peace with its neighbours as the right way forward for
everyone.

Denis MacEoin is a former university teacher in Arabic
and Islamic Studies and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone
Institute.